¶ Intro / Opening
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Face Your Ears podcast. I'm joined here today with my friend, producer extraordinaire. Justin, Hola. How you doing?
Hello, rich. I am doing well. How are you?
things are going wonderfully out here. There's a lot of action happening at Bozek Voice Studio. I'm prepping for a studio sing, this coming month, uh, where students will come and for each other. at my. Home studio.
Excellent.
so that's coming up. I got some events coming up, later this year that I'm slowly putting together and wrapping up some recordings with a few clients, so that some of that stuff will be on its way. but yeah, things are going well. How about you?
Yeah.
¶ Upcoming Projects and Collaborations
I'm excited to announce a new music project. That will be kicking off soon. I met this really cool musician named Jay PVOs on Instagram. he's into the same kind of industrial electronic music that I am, and we made a fast friendship. we, found out we have a lot in common and I asked him if I, could remix one of his songs. Which he was gracious enough to let me do. So that's actually out
excellent on,
all screaming platforms. It's called Not Dead. And he goes by the name of doing the devil's work. So, yeah, you can check out his stuff in that remix. but he and I are doing our own music project called Same, not Same.
excellent.
Launching this month so you can follow us on Instagram to get all the announcements and when the single is out So we had, that coming up soon.
And we'll
Uh,
in the show
yeah,
here.
We'll put the link in there. And then I decided to release another song under my manmade random moniker.
you've been productive.
I have, yeah. So I've actually had this song under my hat for a while. Like years. I produced this song back in like 2021, It was a while ago.
Nice it's gonna see the light of day.
yeah, for sure. And I actually sing on this one, which is a rare thing.
nice.
it sounds great and I'm really excited about it. It's a really fun track, and that should be out on May 30th. So once that's up and running, check our social media. we'll have links to all of that Good stuff.
some
stuff of my own kind of ready to be unleashed on the world.
¶ Podcast Features and Social Media Milestones
Speaking of which, here was recently featured on another podcast. can you tell our audience about that?
That's right. Yeah. I had the pleasure of being on the, into the Mix, podcast, episode 1 91. And Mark Matthews, the host of that podcast, reached out and asked if we would be interested in participating it was a blast. I, talked about Logic Pro, some of the hidden features and functionality. That you can find within logic, and so you can check that out on really anywhere, wherever you listen to podcasts, so
in the description as
yeah.
Mark Matthews nice guy. my episode, where we talked. We'll be coming out soon as well. another thing quickly, I just wanna let everyone know that we are on Instagram, at Face Your Ears podcast.
Yeah.
we have surpassed our 2,500 listens milestone. thank you everyone for listening. We appreciate that. Also we have a YouTube channel. we have all of our episodes up on YouTube, and we also have some entertaining little shorts that we've started to upload
More to come.
More to come.
Rich. Let me ask you something to kick off. The subject matter of our episode today, when you were a young, budding musician up and coming, did you have a rich uncle to finance your every whim
I did have uncles that I would consult, for projects, but I don't know if any of them were,
financiers?
at
Uh.
of them stepped forward to do so.
No, no. Uncle Scrooge, like uncles there.
Why do you ask?
Well, the reason I ask is because I too did not have a well to do uncle to fund my every whim and recording and music production.
¶ Producing Music on a Budget
which does bring us to the topic of today, which is producing on a budget. it's something that both of us really relate to because when we were starting out. We were pretty young. We didn't have money. we know that's a reality for a lot of folks. we wanted to take on this challenge of figuring out, can we create a great, rig, you know, on a limited budget.
So basically the scenario we set is we have a musician who's a singer songwriter, maybe. Yeah, like a voice and another instrument. And we set up two scenarios. one is a musician who has a computer and what kind of package you could put together for that. And a musician that does not have a computer. And, we capped the budget at a thousand dollars. Now I know some people out there might be like, that's still. Quite a bit.
I found that if you have a thousand dollars to put into your rig, you can really do well. I was happy with, what I was able to put together, for that amount of money.
Mm-hmm.
maybe we'll try a challenge in the future where we can
Cut that in half.
Yeah.
500. Yeah.
Yes.
I think a thousand is fairly reasonable, especially as you hear what we've built. 'cause it's pretty comprehensive, at least mine is. the other thing I'll mention is I have no idea what Rich has put together.
we're presenting to each other now for the first time here.
It's a surprise. So I'll kick it off here.
¶ Building a Budget-Friendly Music Rig
my budget for a musician. That does not have a computer. Well, first off, I wanna get this person a computer. So I, went with a Mac Mini M four refurbished to save a little bit of money.
went Mac
Yeah, absolutely. I went Mac because of, logic Pro and GarageBand.
of course.
this computer is $509, so obviously it's like half the budget, but I think it's well worth the investment. I picked this because it's affordable. Like I said, it'll run Logic Pro and you can actually get a 90 day free trial of Logic Pro from Apple. so in that 90.
some leaves and
Yeah, you could go mows and lawns, rake some leaves, do whatever, save up for a few months. logic Pro itself is $199, so just to give you a frame of reference. Those 90 days, use it for free. Save up some money. but in the meantime you also have garage band and garage band for someone getting started is absolutely robust enough to record, use some different instruments, drum beats and so forth. So, so yeah, I went with a M four Mac mini.
Where did you find it?
I found this through apple.com. Apple has a refurbished section on their website.
I had no idea.
Yeah. And so the nice thing too about a refurbished Apple product is it's still fully under warranty, so it's equivalent to buying a brand new computer. So you still get, apple's, coverage and warranty and all that stuff like you would on a regular computer.
awesome.
so for a Mac mini you do have to get a, monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I went to Amazon and I found a San Sui 24 inch, computer monitor. HDMI connection for, for the MAC Mini. Has really good reviews and it's quite affordable. And that was 79, 99.
nice.
not too much.
that's not bad at all.
I found a keyboard and mouse combo, package on Amazon, Bluetooth keyboard, mouse combo. very affordable. really good reviews. And they had a $10 off coupon
bringing
it to 1999. and for a microphone. So this is something else I think is important. I went with a Barringer C one condenser microphone.
and
I found one on reverb.com that is very affordable and it, got really good reviews and it's like really good for an, an entry level Mike.
so
So that's what I want everyone to remember here.
We're
We're just getting started. You know, we're not trying to like compete with LA New York City studios, so we're just trying to help somebody who's maybe 16 or 17 get started. and this microphone I found for $33, so amazing reviews on it, is really surprising. It's like one of those microphones that, pros were reviewing it and they were shocked,
Yeah.
you know?
Beringer is always surprising me with the kind of stuff they put out. I mean, I know people like to dunk on Beringer, but man, like I've used some of their stuff in my studio through the years, for live, uh,
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
some of the boards, you know, I've had. Success with it on some of the monitors and speakers and, some of the, monitoring, what is it, the little headphone monitors. I mean, they make all kinds of little things. They got
Yeah.
in everything.
Yeah, we should, we could actually do a whole episode on Beringer, like it's a fascinating rabbit hole Anyway, Beringer C one condenser microphone and reading the reviews, I was tempted to pick one up myself. 'cause I'm like, man,
It's
this is interesting.
love gear
Yeah.
time you read something, you're gonna wanna buy it.
I know that's the thing that was really dangerous with this exercise for me. It was like, oh, that, caught me in a rabbit hole.
But
But the microphone, you know, you always need a pop filter. So I found one on Amazon, and I think it was just like a generic brand. it was, $8 and 88 cents. And I went over to Reverb to find a microphone stand.
microphone.
the reason I did that is 'cause I just felt like you don't need a brand, like a microphone stand is you know, pretty ubiquitous. you don't need like top of the line $200 microphone stand.
the way some of my students manhandle that microphone stand. I don't know if anybody would want to use that thing
Yeah. in a recording setting, hopefully Take care of your equipment. you're not buying top shelf, so it's not quite as robust. I found one on reverb. identified as a five core tripod mic stand with a phone holder, which I thought was great. people often have lyrics or notes on their phone. it was versatile for like recording. Vocals or instruments. So like if you had a guitar, like an acoustic guitar for example, you could, position it for that.
and I love that it can hold a phone or even a tablet that was $22 and 98 cents. it seems pretty legit. found a good XLR cable for our microphone on Amazon, by Monoprice I've used Monoprice a lot in the past and they're very good quality for not a lot of money. it's good to have a robust cable without spending a ton of money. I think you can do that with a mono price XLR cable at 14.9.
Mm-hmm.
headphones are important especially if you're recording vocals, when you record vocals, you need to have headphones. Otherwise, you're not really gonna be able to hear the music and you'll get bleed into the microphone and, and all that stuff. But I went with, audio Technica, A THM 20 X, closed back monitor headphones. I found these on Sweetwater, and these are. You know, affordable, they come with high ratings and they come with an adapter.
so that way you can use it, on an eighth inch connection, which, you could find on, consumer equipment like a phone the adapter would connect into a, Quarter inch Jack, which you'd find on more professional equipment like an audio interface. So those are $50. I went with a pair of Mackey, CR three x three inch active studio monitors for the. Actual speakers I like these. my wife actually has these in her office, and they're quite nice.
I used them, when we were renovating our basement and the studio down here. And I produced, quite a bit of music using those. they were great. they have a front facing headphone jack, which is really convenient, and they do have really good quality sound, and they're affordable. It's $74 and 65 cents.
nice
you'll need some speaker cables to connect those to, your, interface. I found another set of mono price cables. It's actually two, two cable package, so quarter inch mono price cables on Amazon. good quality, affordable, and that would be $15 98 cents. I also threw in a MIDI controller. I found this on reverb. when something's higher priced, I see if I can find it used or refurbished.
that's a great tactic.
so don't hesitate to do that. if you can find something used that's in really good condition, like even headphones, honestly. Try reverb.com. It's incredible. I threw in the nectar impact GXP 49 USB MIDI keyboard controller. It's really nice 'cause it integrates with your daw, like start, stop, record, that kind of stuff. decent number of keys, 49 keys, so it makes it a little easier to play chords, versus something that's half that, you can't really play chords very well.
or like full, you know, two handed cords, that was showing at $75. And then for the audio interface, I went with Beringer again 'cause frankly I was running outta money at this point. But I went back to reverb.com and found the Beringer UMC 22 USB interface it has two inputs, which is great. One of 'em is XLR for your mic. Another's quarter inch, like if you have a guitar or something. But super easy setup. has a 48 volt phantom power for that microphone. And it's a nice entry level device.
You know, it's, it's not, top shelf but for somebody getting started, it's absolutely fine. it's super cheap. $35 on reverb. So my total came to $939 46 cents. And after tax. $995 83 cents. So I got in under the mark. Yeah, under a thousand dollars.
Excellent.
So, yeah.
Yeah, I really like, your tactic of if you find something you like and it's brand new, it's too expensive, go and look elsewhere. I think that's a great tactic. I tapped into some of that action,
Nice.
the stuff. So what I opted for, was a laptop. there was the Lenovo. Idea Pad Slim three. I went pc.
¶ Laptop and Interface Selection
it had a 15.6 inch touchscreen, a decent hard drive, five 12 gigabytes and, 16 gigabytes of ram and it was $419, on Walmart's website.
Oh wow.
I also saw it in other places for a comparable price. Costco had it as well. so that's where I started with the laptop. So then that allowed me to not have to worry about a keyboard and a monitor and all that business. and a little more portability maybe.
Yeah. Yeah.
the interface, that I went with, was a refurbished Scarlet two i two, gen three, that came with a CM 25 MK three mic, condenser mic, and, the HP 60. three headphones and an XLR cable, all
Wow.
180 3 99.
It's very convenient. I like packages like that for folks that are getting started. 'cause it, it takes the, the burden of like figuring out all these little pieces
Yes.
So.
And I figured, the Scarlet, those focus right interfaces, are pretty solid. if you have a mic made by the same manufacturer and the headphones, that would be a nice combo. what is nice about it also, it's refurbished, but there is a three year warranty with it. it also comes with. Ableton Light, and there's three months of pro tools for free with it as well. the Hit Maker expansion and, other plugins from Antares Anus, soft tube, Lander, Excel and audio and more.
And there's also customer support for life. For a beginner. I think that's cool. 'cause like if you run into
Yeah.
setting up, you give a call. So, that was 180 3 99.
¶ Microphone and Accessories
I went, with a package on, Amazon. A noise shield, pop filter, mic stand, and a music stand built into the mic. Stand by company called, I guess Voor. V-E-V-O-R. and I, I tried, when I buy off of Amazon I always try to go for four star reviews and up, this got a 4.5 review, user review, and that was 47 99, for that whole combo.
Wow. What came in that again? A pop filter.
noise shield, pop filter, mic stand and a music stand built into the mic stand.
Wow.
So that
What was the Noise shield like? what is that?
So the noise shield is like the, foam, kind of a foldable little wall that goes behind your condenser
Okay.
to the stand,
Kind of blocks out ambient room noise.
I'm big on that.
Yeah. Yeah.
on some of our shorts, I have my Aston Shield right in front of me
Looks like the Death star, floating in front of Rich's face.
I think
Yeah,
something was up with the mic I normally use, so I had to use the other mic, which was attached to the thing,
yeah, yeah.
shield off right now.
Cool.
yeah, I like noise shields, and they're not too expensive, especially with a combo like this. the only thing it didn't include was a shock mount. So I got a, Universal Shock Mount. it was 8 99. it was cheap and it had a high rating on Amazon.
¶ Studio Monitors and Cables
and then I went with studio monitors. I went with the personas, Aris 3.5 pair, which was 98 99, on Amazon. I got it because of the high rating. And I, and I, and I also went on other forums and was kind of asking the question when, as I typed it into Google, like. what are the best budget Studio monitors and, and these personas, monitors kept coming up on a, on a lot of the results, high rating on a lot of sites, and people talking about it a lot. And then also went a little bit, extra.
I, I got a, so, a personas Aris sub, there's a Bluetooth sub. I think it's Bluetooth. Yeah, I think it's Bluetooth and it to cover the low end of the spectrum with those smaller speakers. that was 1 44 99. and I found it, that used. I. On Guitar Center's website, you could get it new for like 1 99 99. I had to cut back. I was a little over, so I'm like, okay, where can I cut it? I cut it back on the sub. and then I bought, TRS cables. there were two pairs. I bought two pairs.
They were, 9 98 for each pair. I bought two pairs. That was 1996 total
Why did you buy two pairs?
because what you need is to. Hook up your, speakers to the sub so they could trigger the sub on the low end, and then also from the sub to the interface.
Okay.
when you use a sub, that's what you gotta do. you gotta run your monitors through the sub. my subtotal was 9 23. 91 and a total of 9 79 34. So I still had a little bit of wiggle room at the end.
Yeah. we both had a little room left over to buy a coffee, to celebrate our. Acquisition, That's a awesome package, rich. nice work.
Thanks.
¶ Mac Setup with Logic Pro
we move on to someone that has a computer?
let's do that. I'm excited about this one.
All right. So my imaginary session already has a Mac. I guess I'll assume. I'll start with a microphone. Beringer C one condenser microphone. Again, it's really affordable and their reviews were just so compelling. And I was like, yeah, I'm gonna go with this one again. once more on reverb.com. I should also mention too that this barringer of C one comes with a, amount, an adapter that allows you to mount it on a mic stand.
mm-hmm.
$33 for that. Amazon pop filter, $8 88 cents for that. Same XLR cable, mono price. nice quality, but not super, expensive at 1499. I went with a, I think a slightly better microphone stand here. a rocket tripod microphone stand with a fixed boom. versatile for recording vocals or instruments. sweetwater.com This time.
Mm-hmm.
stand,
Ooh, you splurged on the mic stand.
I did. same headphones, audio Technica, A THM 20 X. Closed back monitor headphones. Found these again. Sweet water. Affordable high ratings. Come with the adopter that you need. $50. Yeah, this is, it's actually all kind of boring 'cause it's a lot of the same stuff, but I'm sorry. yeah. But MIDI controller, I went the same route with the GXP 49 Nectar. Impact USB MIDI keyboard,
That's cool. I like that you did I didn't think of that. I just, assumed that my musician was gonna be like, had a guitar already. They were gonna record or they were gonna use, loops or something like that.
Yeah,
good.
I think a MIDI controller is so important if you're gonna be producing music, because you can use it to control any kind of instrument, especially if you're gonna use, logic or something like that. really great integration with that controller, and I like that it has 49 keys. So $75 I found. I found that on reverb, and your mileage may vary with some of these, you know, resellers like reverb.com or eBays, things like that.
So you could find it for a little less and you know, a little bit more just to kind of depends on the market.
always check, locally Facebook Marketplace
Yep.
as well.
Totally. let's see, and for, the, audio interface like you, I went with a focus, right? Two I two. Third gen, and I found this on reverb.com. I used one that was in really nice condition. and I like focus, right? I have one, I'm using one right now. They're really easy to use and they're affordable. this one is a hundred bucks.
Oh, nice.
can't go wrong. And then at the center of it all is Logic Pro. So Logic Pro, as I mentioned earlier, is 1 99. it is a fully featured professional music production software, suite. everything from loops to instruments to. Audio effects and tools. you name it, it's got it. check out my episode on Inside the Mix with Mark Matthews and I talk all about that.
Yes.
so 1 99 for Logic Pro and then the speakers, this is where I splurged. before I talk about the speakers, I should mention speaker cables. same speaker cables, mono price, quarter inch, pair from Amazon, $15 and 98 cents, which we'll connect to our Yamaha Hs five, five inch powered studio monitors. so I found these on Sweetwater. Really high ratings. you'll see these a lot online, like people in various studios use these, Yamaha monitors. they're really nice. and affordable.
They're $400 for the pair I. I think this is a really important investment, if you already have a lot of the other things like a computer this is where you want to invest most of your money in the speakers, And so my subtotal for this came to $931 and 84 cents. And that brought my total after tax here in Michigan anyway to $987 and 75 cents. So once again, slightly under a thousand dollars, but a fully featured, package for somebody that wants to get started that has a computer already.
So, yeah, that's what I came up with. How about you, rich?
Yeah, interesting the route you took.
¶ Universal Setup with Apollo Solo
So, what I did was, I didn't assume whether the person was using a Mac or a PC at all. I tried to make it compatible with both. so I'm gonna start with my interface. I went with the Apollo solo, which, Runs 4 99, 499. And, I, I found that on Sweetwater. it comes with a two year warranty and comes with a do, Luna. It comes with Luna and there are a lot of free plugins with these Apollo interfaces.
at any moment in time, there might be some kind of promotion where if you buy an Apollo, you get a package of. plugins free. there was in fact a promotion going on. They claim it's $1,600 worth of plugins that come for free with it.
Wow.
yeah, so that's cool. Some famous, compressors and reverbs and whatnot. So that was what I started with, as the baseline. that's like already half my money. and then, I had to buy a Thunderbolt three USB cable. And, you know what's funny is it was kind of hard to locate that on Amazon. everything was vague, as to whether it was really Thunderbolt three. There was a lot of stuff where they're like. on Amazon now, they'll tell you if something's returned often.
So I tried to avoid those links where it said that, and I tried to go for
Smart.
Uh, but I found one, by Cable Matters, for 25 99.
That's really interesting. So the interface doesn't come with one,
I was reading on the, UAD Universal Audio Site. it says specifically does not include the Thunderbolt cable.
Okay.
But yeah. so it on Amazon. there was a package I found, with the road NT one microphone. It, it came with the mic, it came with a shock mount, a pop filter and an XLR cable. altogether, with a 10 year warranty, for $154 on Amazon. that was a fun little find, and people were commenting on it being a solid, starter microphone. the mic stand I got was the pile, the pile, microphone
Oh, you love pile?
I think I have a pile like, conditioner or something like
Power conditioner.
they're another one of those companies that show up a lot, when you wanna buy the odds and ends the complete little things in the studio. Right. I bought a mike stand with a weighted bottom. the first, package I had a tripod With this one, I decided to go with a weighted bottom. it was $30 32 cents. And then, I found a noise shield, for 24 95. and then, I was, by this point I was getting close to my total here. So I was like, alright, lemme try something different with this setup.
And what I decided to go with was just, I, I wanted to go with a Higher end headphones instead of going to the studio monitor out, I wanted to go the higher end headphones. are better headphones, but I had picked the audio Technica, A THM 50 X. this was another one of those. Pieces of equipment that I saw on a lot of forums when people were talking about a rock solid, pair of headphones that everyone seemed to love.
so I, that was 1 49 0.9. and so like you could spend less on headphones and get monitors as well you could knock the headphones back and then be able to afford those. Aris the personas, Aris studio monitors for my first build, right? So my subtotal was 8 84 25 and my total after taxes was 9 37 31. And so there was still like some money left over you might even be able to find a pair of studio monitors for, you know.
For the, for that amount of money left over, you might be able to find a pair of used personas,
Yeah. Or like those mackey's I mentioned. I think you could swing those for probably close to that, like 75, 50 bucks maybe somewhere in there,
yeah.
That's great.
That's what I came up with.
Excellent. I love it. the mic stand is jumping out at me. I didn't think about having a weighted mic stand. that's actually a really good point. 'cause otherwise they're kind of flimsy and they flop all over the place. And,
Mm-hmm.
I like that you went with, more premium headphones. I kind of thought about doing that myself, where, instead of having. Monitors and headphones. you invest more in the headphones 'cause they're a necessity if you're gonna record vocals, So I like it.
Yeah.
that's great.
¶ Conclusion and Final Thoughts
We, both tackled two scenarios where a musician maybe has a computer but they don't have any of the equipment and vice versa, where they, they don't have anything, and they, they need to get started from scratch. between the two of us. And these four scenarios, that we presented, you can start to get a sense of what you can put together for a thousand dollars. it sounds like both of us came in under a thousand dollars technically, so that's great.
I think, it's amazing nowadays How many sites have good packaged deals, you just gotta dig around a little bit. and you gotta kind of a game plan going into it. if you're in it for the long haul, you'll upgrade some stuff. But, it's all there. I'm so pleased that you can, put something decent together for that amount of money.
So we will put all of this together into our show notes so that you can dig into it a little bit more and maybe find something, that you need to add to your studio or build a whole, outfit for you to begin producing. thanks so much everyone for listening. we appreciate all of the engagements and listeners that we have. Like Rich said at the top of the episode, we now have over 2,500 listens on the podcast, which is amazing. thank you for that, everyone. We'll catch you in the next one.
Bye for now.
bye.